1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to building construction in general and in particular to building elements made from wood, waste or non-viable wood and/or recycled materials and a method of constructing buildings employing the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Many types of building construction are presently known an used around the world. Many of these types of construction have adapted from the materials at hand or due to the environmental constraints that are placed upon the location. Disadvantageously, many conventional construction methods may not be as environmentally or cost efficient or be readily erectable.
One such method of building construction is known as timber frame construction utilizing large timbers as the main structural supports of the home also known as post and beam framing. Although this method provided a very strong and long lasting structure, large timbers became increasingly difficult and expensive to obtain. Additionally, the ease of construction and lower cost of framing houses with lighter pieces of milled lumber offered similar qualities for a significantly lower cost and were easier to produce in large quantities.
Another common conventional building forming method is to build walls from an array of vertical supporting columns called studs in a construction technique known as wood frame construction. These supports are placed rather close together making it easy to apply sheet materials (such as plywood or drywall) and strip materials (such as siding boards or lath for plaster) to the studs on the inside and outside of the framed structure. These building methods disadvantageously, consume substantial natural resources and in particular, consume natural resources in a manner which take a long time to replace, namely large, old growth trees.
Other non-wood construction methods have also been developed, however these methods have been difficult and time consuming to construct a building using these methods. The first challenge to conventional construction is the Structural Insulated Panel (SIP). SIPs are a modular and energy-efficient method of construction that uses large sheets of rigid foam insulating material (expanded polystyrene or EPS) sandwiched between sheets of board-stock such as plywood, oscillated strand-board (OSB) or some other type of suitable manufactured product. Sometimes the exterior siding material is also attached to the plywood at manufacture, and some manufacturers have chosen to pre-apply the interior finish wall material at this stage. The SIP system however, still requires a basic wood frame to create the structure for the building. The system also suffers from inflexibility and the need for pre-planning at the site, and does require expertise in its application.
A second alternative to conventional wood frame construction takes its design cue from the very entrenched practice of foundation forming or cribbing. Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) are hollow foam blocks or panels which are stacked in a prescribed shape or pattern to form the exterior walls of a building. They then reinforce the system by installing steel rebar, they then pour the concrete to fill the void and create a reinforced concrete wall sandwiched between two layers of rigid foam insulation.
Although ICFs do offer a multitude of benefits over conventional wood frame construction, this method still suffers a number of drawbacks. Notably, the entire building envelop requires a relatively high level of skills, tradesmen and equipment necessary to construct the foundation walls and floor of any wood frame structure. The cost involved in this form of construction also outweigh that of conventional framing, and increase the cost of the building proportionately. Constructing the ICF building also requires more time than does erecting a wood framed structure.